


Pink dress and high heels, suit and tie

by Elesianne



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Class Differences, F/M, First Meeting, Mild Sexual Content, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:02:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23970502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elesianne/pseuds/Elesianne
Summary: A poor girl stumbles onto a rich boy at a nightclub, and they hit it off. Too bad that it turns out neither of them is what the other thought.A modern AU first meeting of Curufin and his wife. A bit funny, a bit sexy, a bit sad.
Relationships: Curufin | Curufinwë/Curufin's Wife
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	Pink dress and high heels, suit and tie

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sparks fly out](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8520295) by [Elesianne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elesianne/pseuds/Elesianne). 



> This is very different from my other fics in content and style but the idea just refused to leave me alone. The Curufinwë and Netyarë (his future wife and mother of Celebrimbor) in this are the same as in my fic [_Sparks fly out_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8520295/chapters/19530187) and its sequels, personality-wise, though they are of course different in some respects because they exist in modern times this time. 
> 
> **You don't need to have read any of my other fics to read this.** [Quenya names](https://elesianne.tumblr.com/post/153874978666/tolkien-meta-rambling-the-quenya-names-of-the) used.
> 
>  **Warnings:** alcohol, having sex when both parties are drunk, swearwords including the f-word because I have a potty mouth when I'm not trying to write canon-compliant fic, and talk of prostitution (no actual prostitution).

It was far from a meet cute, Netyarë thinks later when things between them are very different.

Instead of a meet cute it's both of them on a wild night out. Netyarë's at a friend's bachelorette party, wearing high-heeled pink pumps and a tight pink dress that she hates because it pinches her sides while also making her feel too exposed. She's not drunk enough for how late it is, and she's rather grumpy because the party hasn't been that much fun. The others have been bickering all night.

She needed fun after the week she's had. Asshole customers in both her jobs, and a botched painting she'd had high hopes for. The materials for that one had cost a lot.

It's getting very late and Netyarë's both horny and lonely. It's not a great mood, especially the loneliness, but she's been single longer than she wanted to be after her last break-up. There's nothing quite like the approaching wedding of a friend to remind you of just how single you are.

She tries to shake the loneliness off on the dancefloor with the two other bridesmaids that are still standing, though one of them would probably not be if she didn't have a guy to lean on. Netyarë doesn't know where she got the guy from. The bachelorette party has disintegrated almost completely, everyone pairing off or wandering off or escorting the nearly black-out drunk bride home.

Netyarë decides not to care that most of the others are gone. She dances wild enough to lose her bridesmaid's sash somewhere on the floor, and doesn't bother looking for it. She also dances wild enough to accidentally bump into a guy in a suit who grabs her arms to steady her and says 'whoa', and then again 'whoa' as he looks down at her.

He seems to be the same degree of drunk as she is – rather, but not too much to have fun or be incapable of making half-sensible decisions. And he's tall, dark, and handsome, like the best kind of cliché, if also rather cocky by what little she can hear him shout to her as they try to talk over the music.

And he is a spoiled rich boy, judging by his clothes and general attitude, with a name that reminds Netyarë of something she can't quite grasp right now. She thinks she might not have heard it right in all the noise. It doesn't matter, though.

On principle Netyarë doesn't fuck guys like this but this one is also rather charming. She likes the shine in his beautiful, long-lashed eyes when he mentions his job which, thank all the gods, isn't hedge fund manager or investment banker. He actually creates things too, and Netyarë likes the passion in his voice.

She doesn't mention any of her jobs because a rich boy's reaction to them would just depress her and that would make sure she went home alone today. Sometimes it is better not to confirm one's worst suspicions.

But the longer she talks to him in a shadowy corner of the club they've retreated to, slowly sipping the ridiculously expensive drink he bought her –

and then dances with him again (posh boy has moves, surprisingly, though he needed to buy and drown a shot before getting on the dancefloor with her) –

the more Netyarë feels like she wants him to come home with her.

Surely her rule of not having sex with guys like this can be relaxed to not dating them, she persuades herself. He wouldn't even _want_ to date her, certainly not if he sees her cheap clothes and apartment in daylight.

She texts a friend to tell her she's asking someone to spend the night with her.

When she whispers the invitation in his ear, her hand on his thigh, he shivers in a way that's very satisfying. She takes his hand when he reaches for her, and they half-run the few blocks to her shitty apartment. Netyarë wonders what he was even doing in that club in this part of town but doesn't bother to ask.

(If she had, Curufinwë might have told her, or not, that he had a shit week too, with constant problems at work and too little sleep. He'd wanted to wind down somewhere where he wouldn't run into any of the people who made his week terrible. Tyelkormo knew a place; of course he did, and then found someone within an hour and disappeared with them so fast Curufinwë didn't even see what gender they were.)

Whatever his reason for slumming it tonight, the posh boy does get a snotty look on his face in the grimy stairwell of Netyarë's building. And maybe he would have that look in her shabby apartment too if he wasn't too busy kissing her like his life depends on it, long-fingered hands reaching for the infuriatingly tiny zipper of her dress as soon as they get in the door.

And it turns out that a tall rich boy doesn't mind a small bed when he's fucking her on it like his life also depends on that.

He's less selfish in bed than she expected from someone like him and his long finges are dextrous and talented, which – good for him, and good for her.

Looking down at her, he says between pants and thrusts, 'Fuck, your body – a piece of art –' and she grins at that, and at how desperately his hands hold on to her ampler-than-she-likes hips. How could she not grin, and meet his thrusts with even more enthusiasm, when he is like that?

'Fuck, your smile', he says, and crushes their mouths together. He tastes of good whisky.

Netyarë is very pleased with herself for relaxing her rule, and with how the not-so-great bachelorette party ended up ending for her.

And afterwards he's a cuddler – isn't that the weirdest thing? – so they fit in her bed well even after he mumbles, 'Can I stay the night', and promptly falls asleep. One of those men, then.

Netyarë doesn't mind being held. She might or might not run her fingers through his soft black hair once or twice before falling asleep herself.

In the morning, too early, she wakes up to him standing next to the bed, looming over her, asking, 'How much?'

When she doesn't reply, he repeats, 'How much? Come on, just tell me. I have a meeting I've got to get to.'

'It's Saturday', she replies, not understanding anything else of what he says, but with a sinking feeling in her stomach. He has his wallet in hand, and a wad of cash.

'I've still got a meeting', he says, his lips a tight line that is at odds with his bedhead and rumpled shirt. He adds, 'I'm not going to pay you any more if you drag this out. Just tell me what I owe you for what I did to you last night. Your standard rate.'

He has to repeat once more before she replies, and what she says is, 'You think I'm a prostitute?'

Rather she yells it, and gets up. There's a bad taste in her mouth that is not just her hangover.

And he is way too tall when she's not wearing high heels.

'I'm not a hooker', she says slowly as if to an idiot, because he just stands there gaping at her.

He splutters. 'You were certainly dressed just like one! With the, the cheap skin-tight dress and the fuck-me heels!'

'I was not! – I was dressed like all the other bridesmaids at the bachelorette party', Netyarë defends herself. 'But, shit, the dress was chosen by the maid of honour who has half the tits that I do and doesn't understand that 'low-cut' means 'lewd' for a bustier girl when she has to wear a small size because she's so damn short… or it means she actually looks like a hooker. Oh gods.'

She sits back down on the bed.

(Curufinwë thinks that she was attractive in the tight pink dress that he didn't know was for a bachelorette's, but she's lovelier in nothing in the morning light spilling in from the surprisingly large windows of this otherwise depressing room. He shakes his head and blames his hangover for that thought.)

Netyarë can't help saying, 'I can't believe you thought I was a hooker.' She looks him up and down. 'Why would a guy who looks like you even pay for sex? Is it, I don't know, some kind of sick thrill for you?'

'Fuck you', he says, and she thinks hysterically, _you did_. He says, stiffly, 'For your information, I've never paid for sex.'

'Nice for you that you don't have to break that streak', Netyarë grinds out. She feels like she wants to sleep for another four hours. 'Now get out.'

He finishes dressing in silence. She picks up his tie from between her pillows and hands it to him. She wonders why he didn't ask for her price last night before they got into bed. It would have stung less than this, being asked afterwards when she cannot un-fuck him. She doesn't ask him, though.

He hesitates at the doorway. She stands nearby, tense, wanting to make sure he leaves.

'Are you sure you don't want –' and his hand hovers over his pocket where he put his wallet, 'I think we might have almost broken your bed. It wobbled a lot more near the end.'

'How many times do I have to tell you, I don't have sex for money. Get out. And', she adds, his words from a couple of minutes ago suddenly surfacing in her mind, 'for your information, it wasn't just you _doing things to me_ last night – we did things to each other, and together.'

Or so she thought at least. Why did he even bother making it good for her if he thought she was a prostitute? She has no idea.

Gods, the next time she feels even a little bit lonely, she'll come home straight away and cuddle with her couch pillows. Better to be pathetic in that way than this.

As he opens the door he looks like he wants to say something more, the set of his shoulders stiff and determined, but the look she sets on her face works to persuade him otherwise, and he leaves without a word.

Netyarë closes the door behind him with a little too much force. She takes a very long, very hot shower, eats ice cream for breakfast, and then gets to work trying to resurrect her botched-up painting before her afternoon shift at the sleazy bar where she still bartends a couple of days a week. She'll be able to quit that job soon if she sells a couple more paintings for as good a price as she got for her last one.

(Curufinwë walks in a random direction for two blocks before he realises that actually he needs to call a cab. He ends up being twenty minutes late for his meeting, hair still wet from the shower.

He is as irritable as a poked bear for the whole day, and when Tyelkormo asks how his night went, he says, 'Badly', and nothing more no matter how much Tyelko tries to pry or shares about his own night.)

*

Two days later, like every Monday, Curufinwë comes to have lunch with his mother at her sculpting studio.

Nerdanel kisses his cheek as she lets him in and says, 'Come meet the artist I've been talking about. We started our collaboration today.'

Curufinwë would rather not. He's been in a constantly foul mood since Saturday morning and just wanted to talk about family things with his mother and kid brothers, and try to forget all about his disastrous personal life.

Following his mother as she chatters, he walks to the side room of the studio where there's a table free of marble dust, reserved for eating.

And there's Netyarë in a paint-splattered artist's smock, her brown hair tied up in a messy bun, setting the table.

 _Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,_ runs through Curufinwë's head as Nerdanel introduces them.

(And through Netyarë's.)

'You're a painter?' Curufinwë asks her in an angry whisper when Nerdanel is busy with the food and making the twins carry it to the table.

'Do you like that better than what you thought I was?' Netyarë hisses back.

She is remarkably shorter than him when she's not wearing heels, and as she looks at him, eyes sparking, Curufinwë thinks she really looks like she doesn't like having to look so far up at him.

Nerdanel gets back before Curufinwë has a chance to reply to Netyarë with more than a dark look.

Tilting her head curiously, Nerdanel asks them, 'Do you two know each other?'

'We've met before', Netyarë says, stiff. 'Briefly.'

Curufinwë says nothing.

(Actually he says remarkably little to her over the course of the meal, little enough to be rude, especially when he also sits all tense and stiff-necked and with a prideful look on his face that is no doubt a facet of his arrogance, like his cockiness at the nightclub.

But his mother is wonderful – offering Netyarë an opportunity that could very well be her big break, collaborating with such an esteemed, established artist – and Curufinwë's teenaged little brothers are entertaining, so Netyarë just tries to not care about Curufinwë's glowering and silence.)

Curufinwë tries not to care that Netyarë doesn't look at him even once.

(Neither of them has much success.)

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, so this ends in basically the same place as the first chapter of _Sparks fly out_ , but got there by a more circuitous and NSFW route. 
> 
> This definitely belongs in the top three of 'most self-indulgent things I've written' but I had a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you guys enjoyed reading :)
> 
> I would love to hear what you thought of this alternative first meeting!


End file.
